WD #6: Follow the plan
This post is part of my Work Diary (WD): a space where I show my creative process to write a short-book about how to implement a good reading habit. You can read the rest of the Work Diary posts here :-)
This week’s Work Diary will be brief.
This week, I’ve done several writing sessions for the short-book.
The difficulty with this kind of project is that you need to follow the plan. In my case, to follow the outline I defined in the previous Work Diary. Because, if you don’t, it is very likely that you will end up creating something different from what you had proposed at the beginning: and I really want to make this short-book about the habit of reading.
So this project requires a different mindset than, for example, when I write for the Gestalt’s Garden.
Most of the posts I write for the Gestalt Garden are “improvised”:
- I start by thinking of an tentative initial idea.
- I write about that tentative idea.
- In the process of writing, I discover a new (and more interesting) idea that I will use in the post.
- I finish writing the post about the idea I’ve discovered and I usually delete the text related to the initial idea.
As you can see, I don’t have too much control over what I’m going to write at the end: there is ample room for improvisation and discovery.
This is the kind of creative process I enjoy the most.
Unfortunately, I cannot apply this creative process to the short-book project. For this project, I need to write about pre-planned ideas and stay on that path. For me, this work of executing ideas —rather than discovering them— is much more difficult and exhausting.
During this week I’ve been tempted to lengthen this Work Diary to explain these two types of creative processes in depth. But I have not done so. Because to do so would have meant taking away the attention and time needed to keep the short-book project moving at a good pace: and I really want to finish it!
However, next week you will have a post explaining these ideas in depth: if I don’t end up discovering some more interesting ideas along the way :^)
And you, what do you enjoy more executing or discovering your ideas?